Unforeseen Consequences

And so continues the ongoing saga that is my clinical (hah! I wish...)

This week I'm up in Operating Theatre (or better known as OPSuite). There is a whole bunch of operating rooms where doctors work their magic in cutting up the human body and fixing it with the most advanced techniques known to humanity. Actually, it's a lot more primitive than I thought.

Having read many a sci-fi book and watch many a medical tv show, what actually happens in operating theatres is quite eye opening. I mean sometimes it gets downright brutal. For one operation, the surgeon had to get to the gallbladder (I think; I don't remember clearly), so he uses this soldering iron thingo and basically burns his way to the desired level. "Burns" is the correct wording here. One hand is holding a small clamp and the other holds the soldering iron. He grabs a piece of soft tissue and basically slashes it away, cutting deeper into the body. Scratch that, "burns" is that correct, "slash-and-burn" is a much more accurate wording. You could even see the smoke swirling around inside the human body. Since he's accessing the body through small holes which are plugged up with instruments, I have no idea where the smoke goes. Maybe it just floats around until the body absorbs it through diffusion. Another example is when the surgeon is trying to put a large steel nail into a patient's neck of femur. It had been fractured and the nail holds the bones in the correct position to heal. After several minutes of drilling and screwing fruitlessly, one surgeon suggested hitting the nail with a hammer, since "it will bend to the left" or something. I thought he was joking, until he picked a hammer and started smashing the nail like Thor smashing with Mjolnir (check Norse mythology; its fun). It looked so brutal but apparently the nail was going the right way, so the surgeon continued smashing away.

To be honest, OPSuite is kinda boring, since I can't really do all that much. I have done a bit of screening, doing real time x-rays for the surgeons, but I'm just a student. Other radiographers have to be nearby to make sure I don't kill the patient or muck things up. But it is interesting. I mean, getting to see surgery up close is quite cool and learning all these new things, it makes up for the boring moments.

Also, working there reminded me of the dangers of hearsay. A few of the other students didn't have the best experiences up there, due to conflicts with the senior radiographer up there. However, I never experienced anything as bad as the stories they tell. I know that he can be pedantic, and that's probably a reason why the other students don't get the best experience, but I can't really say anything bad about him. If anything I'm expanding my knowledge of the profession of radiography thanks to him. And as such, this presents the dangers of hearsay. Just because someone else says something about someone doesn't mean that it's necessarily true. Shades of Wild Swans, I know...

Just finished Half Life 2 Episode 2. It is amazing, an excellent example of game design in the swamplands of PC gaming. It also has a commentary track and you can listen to the developers and voice actors talk about the process of creating the game and why they took the directions that they did. It's very enlightening. It is a first person shooter, but it's definitely a series that everyone (at least every serious gamer) should play. There's a line in there that was spoken by one of the characters "Prepare for unforeseen consequences". That line is just in my head and I can't get rid of it. It was so well delivered. Now I have to wait for Episode 3.

Now I'm off to take a nap. Those lead aprons I wear to protect myself from the radiation are so fricken heavy. My shoulders are burning in agony. I might down a few painkillers.

The Lost Coast

I not suggesting that after last week's rant that you have a lack of common sense Land. Maybe you just suffered a brief lapse. When it happened to me, I was like, put my money in, see it rejected, sign says "insufficient change sale canceled", recheck display, see "exact fare only", take money and move to counter. Altogether maybe 20 seconds? Not over a minute of putting money in again and again. But that probably sounds a bit arrogant. I happened to notice the sign and all the other people didn't. The morning after the post I did point out it was exact change only to someone, but they snapped at me that they noticed, like a minute after first putting money in. Maybe they were having a bad day.

Anyway, the end of the week signifies the end of another aspect of clinical.

In this case it was General X-rays and Mobiles. Basically mobiles is taking a mobile x-ray machine and taking x-rays of patients who are too sick to come down to General X-rays (which is termed Work Area 1). 90% of mobile x-rays will be chest x-rays, with occasional other bits of body anatomy thrown in. When it's quiet, it's a nice little bludge. When it's busy, it's hell. And it's usually busy. Every 15 minutes the pager will go off with a request for x-rays, it could in ICU, neonates or halfway across and up the hospital. So while it does involve a lot of walking, it's the never ending request for x-rays and no rest whatsoever during the hours that drags you down. I don't like mobiles. You are constantly pulled in one direction then another, with difficult patients and sometimes difficult doctors.

Here's a little story. There was a call for a chest x-ray on the 5th level. When we got there, it turned out that the patient had just suffered a cardiac arrest and was only beginning to come out of it. One of the doctors turned us away, saying no x-ray was necessary. As we turn to leave, another doctor asks us if we're going to do a chest x-ray and is quite surprised when we told him told that there was going to be no x-ray. In the end, the doctor returns saying they want a x-ray but they will page us again when the patient is more stable. Time passes and finally the request comes down and we go back up there again. However, a doctor in the room (probably a different doctor, I'm not sure) turns us away saying that they don't need an x-ray. And we had to walk down and away again. I'm not blaming any individual doctors, but no one seems in charge and even the doctors didn't not what was going. One says yes, another says no. Make up your damn minds and come to a group consensus, x-ray or not?

And on the weekends, what do I do? Besides reading books and manga? Well, I've been playing through Half Life 2 and its sequel Half Life 2: Episode 1. It's an awesome game and great story as well. It just pulls you in so deeply. I'll probably buy Episode 2 later tonight, over Steam. Here is the intro to the original to take a look see.

Memories from the Wind Scene

Entering the third week of clinicals. Halfway there and it feels as if I've been working for so long. Just a little bit more to go then back to the uni grind.

One of the myriad of groups on Facebook that catch my attention is one whose name is something along the lines of "When I walk behind slow moving people, I want to punch them in the back of the head". Because walking slow is a bad thing apparently. I don't blame slow moving people. They have a reason (either good or bad) as to why they are moving slow. I just find an opportunity to overtake them, same thing applys to cars (with the exception of Lesley's dad, he goes sooooo slow). Apparently slow moving people equates to stupid people. Not necessarily. Moving slow does not mean you are stupid or lacking common sense. No that's different.

Here's something that's stupid or at least lacking common sense. At Granville Station, like most other train station, you can buy tickets from the counter or from the machine. Lately the machine had a bad case of the gremlins and couldn't give change; you had to pay the exact fare. It even says so on the screen just about the main one "Exact fare only". I was waiting in line and I saw the exact fare only sign, so I stepped out of line and moved towards the counter. When I bought the exact fare the next day, I ended up going for the counter because the line was full of people pushing in ten dollar notes and expecting change for their $5.20 fare, ignoring the "insufficient change" and "exact fare only" and keep pushing in money again and again. After a good minute, the person gave a snort of disgust and moved to the counter. And the next person would do exactly the same thing, pushing in money expecting change for a good minute before moving away. Rinse and repeat. Over the past fortnight, I've always noticed a short but determined line of people pushing in money, expecting change and getting none while completely ignoring the signs the machine puts up. I don't fault stupid people. Stupid people are stupid (well, duh) and eventually the laws of evolution weeds them out. Common sense, despite its name, is not very common, or at least, not as common as you like or think it would be.

Well enough ranting, what about clinicals? So good, so far. I did spend a day at the Children's Hospital in Westmead to see how different it is from doing adults. It's a lot different and I don't really like it there. I have nothing against children, and there are some pretty outgoing and funny kids over there, but there are also a large number of kids who scream and kick when just entering the x-ray room. I put it down to fear of the unknown, but I'm not 100% sure what's running through those kids' minds. It does not hurt, your parents are there as well holding you. Might be just me. I asked my mom if I kicked and screamed during x-rays or whatnot when I was younger and she said "no I was very quiet". There like this age where all the kids scream though. They seem to be around 2-3 years old. The slightly older ones don't scream even though they might be feeling a little overwhelmed and the slightly younger ones don't have a grasp of what exactly is going on. It very different, but give me little old ladies to x-ray anyday.

Also this week I'm on General X-rays, x-raying outpatients and in patients as well as doing mobile x-rays for those intensive card wards. It's been pretty cool so far, except they introduced a new system for processing x-ray cassettes. Generally speaking, most systems in Westmead are digital or DR. You place a part of the anatomy on the image receptor, a large flat board connected to a computer. The picture is taken and sent straight to the computer screen, where you can see a preview. It is very fast and produces minuscule amounts of radiation. Computed radiography or CR has a cassette with a photosensitive film inside. The picture is taken on the cassette, then it has to be taken to be id on a internal tag using a computer. A scanner reads the image and the picture is outputted on a computer screen. Longer and slightly more radiation. There is a new system for id-ing the cassettes and the other students and I had to spend some time to learn and familiarise ourselves with a new system. But it is much easier to use, definitely more user-friendly.

10AM shift tomorrow, so a few more extra hours of sleep...

Escape from Westmead

Another week of clinical is done. For the past week I've been working Emergency and while there are days where it was tiring, there were also days where it was downright boring. The weekends have never looked so good.

On Thursday I went out for dinner with some friends mainly to discuss our differing clinical experiences. We went to this awesome restaurant called Sahara at Parramatta near the bus stop. The food was great but no pics because I don't do those and I was starving at that point. I had some dish that had thin strips of lamb with bread and these sauces. Along with a couple beers and the meal went down swimmingly.

Also a few hours ago I had to put together this cabinet-slash-drawer thingy for shoes. It took almost two hours because of the shoddy engineering and near non-existent instructions. Well it did have instructions but it was a few small pictures with some pathetic labeling. I guess it did work my reasoning skills quite hard, but it works well now. My mum both that on a whim, because it looked good in the catalogue. I think it is a complete and utter waste of money and space. She doesn't have enough shoes to justify buying a little cabinet to store them, but what can I say?

That incident reminded of a time that I went to Westfields in Parramatta. I went to buy a book and get some gift cards. One of my uni friends was with her sister in Westfields and say me but she didn't say hi because "I looked very determined...like a man on a mission". I guess that the way that most guys go shopping. Generally speaking, of course, guys only go shopping when we need to buy something. We need to get that console game, that new book that just came out and maybe a new shirt because the old one is ripped. Less window shopping, more mission. Since then I've noticed that whenever I go shopping I have a clear definite list of things I need to buy and I go in, buy the items, then go out and home. Women tend to window shop and buys things on impulse more. Just a few observations.

Also bought Halo 3 for my brother. I've pretty much finished all of Mass Effect and a new game for the Xbox 360 (it still lives!) is just what the doctor ordered. And BSS finally managed to sub the remaining episodes of Moyashimon. And I'm uncapped so cue the downloading spree.

Man I'm tired. Clinicals really take a lot of you.